DARK LIGHT:
A WORLD WITHOUT HEROES II
By Dale Sherman
"Mr. Klein?" A voice called from the shadows of the opened door.
Gene looked up from his desk and squinted slightly as he looked at the figure in the doorway. All he could make out was just the figure of a rather short and frumpy woman against the bright sunlight that illuminated her from behind, and Gene suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to tell the janitor to fix the ceiling lights in his office once again. Because of this his small office was dark except for the desklamp that illuminated his oak desk where he had been scribbling through paperwork since lunchtime. It was now long after the students had left for the day and the sun was already setting on the west side of the school, engulfing the building in long shadows, darkened rooms and shimmering, golden rays of light from the windows on the other side of the building.
While the lighting lead Gene unable to make out the person who was talking to him, it made little difference. Upon hearing the woman's voice, Gene instantly knew who it was.
"Yes, Mrs. Young," he asked politely as he reached with his left hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it. As he did so, Gene leaned back in his chair, waiting for what the gray-haired women in the doorway had to say.
"It's 5:30," Mrs. Young said as she entered the room and approached the desk. She was dressed in a long brown coat and was fussing with her purse while at the same time looking at Gene. She had a look of concern on her face that seemed to instantly amuse Gene. "Everyone has already left for the day. How much longer are you going to be here tonight?"
Gene tilted the overstuffed office chair back into a normal sitting position and moved his left hand from his neck to the graying beard on his face. He began stroking his beard as he spoke. "Not much longer, Mrs. Young. Not much longer."
"Well, I certainly hope not, Mr. Klein," Mrs. Young fiddled with the snap on the purse as she spoke, although she did not notice it. "You've been here much too late the past couple of weeks and I'm getting concerned."
Gene looked at the woman and raised an eyebrow, a smile playing on his lips.
"We're all getting concerned," the older woman corrected, her cheeks slightly flushing. "You've been driving yourself very hard ever since the school board requested to meet with you and it's just not good for you."
The smile left Gene's face with the mention of the school board. He had been in hot water with them before; most recently the past fall, when he allowed a band that some of the students had put together to perform at the annual talent show. In that situation he had thought he had covered himself by insisting that the group perform for him and a couple of the school board members ahead of time to be sure of the material. The kids, however, had tricked him and the school board members by changing some of their lyrics when it came time to perform the night of the talent show, and it ruffled quite a few feathers when it occurred.
Especially as the show was being broadcast live on local cablevision that night. Not to mention the constant use of the "F" word in their lyrics as well.
Even though he was just as much a victim as everyone else, and even though he had screened the group with two members of the school board, he was still held up as the troublemaker. A role he had gotten into during his first year as principal at the high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he had suggested that the drama class stage a production of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE and allowed them to use the word "bastard" in the show.
"Why didn't I just have them say 'son of a sea cook' like in the movie?" Gene had asked Mrs. Young after the fallout hit.
It was all downhill in the four years since that time. Not that teaching had ever been an easy route for him. He had started teaching fresh out of college and immediately ran into trouble during those early days when he began assigning comic books to the kids. In fact, at the time he was ready to give it all up and follow his original dream of music; but when those plans fell through, he knew where his calling lied. At least with the kids he could show proof of actually getting somewhere with what he was doing. More than he ever got with music.
Still, teaching was a hard road. He bounced from school to school until about 1982 when he snagged a job teaching English Lit and Social Studies at a high school in New Jersey. Then there was a shake-up of the whole staff at the other high school in town due to budget problems. Gene had made the offer to try to work out a deal with the school board to allow some of the teachers at the other school a chance to teach at his. It meant going over the head of the principal at his own school; who hated the idea; yet that certainly did not break Gene's heart as he cared so little for her anyway that it was fun in a dark, sort-of way.
That led directly to Gene working with the local school board, and eventually to him being in a position to move up from "just being a teacher," as Gene's wife had said at the time. Funny, Gene would later comment to friends, that she left him a year after he got the principal position in Connecticut because she felt he was "too busy" for her anymore. She had pushed him so hard to move up from something that he really felt he was good at to something that bored him almost to tears now, and then she ended up not wanting to be around to enjoy it anyway.
But that was a while ago, Gene thought, and he was amazed at how pieces of his past would fly through his head so quickly as he looked at Mrs. Young.
"It's nothing to worry about, Mrs. Young," Gene leaned back in his chair once again. He ran both hands through the short gray and black hair on his head, then linked his hands together and rested the back of his head in his hands as the chair reached the wall with a clunk. "I know the school board is not happy with me avoiding the dress-code issue once again, but I've got too much on my plate right now to worry about little Johnny wearing a Metaluna . . . Metalcult . . . Metallica t-shirt . . . or whatever they call themselves. Especially with only a few weeks left in the school year."
"You sure?" Mrs. Young folded her arms in front of her as if it was a bold state of defiance. Seeing the little round woman in such a pose made Gene smile once again. "Because I've been around you long enough to know you can put up a good front at times."
"Don't worry about it, Mrs. Young," Gene said with affection in his voice, "I haven't lost a battle with them yet and I won't let them get me this time either. I'm just staying late because I just want to get caught up before we reach finals in the next few weeks. That's all."
Mrs. Young huffed, yet she knew it would have little use on Gene. "Okay, I can see I'm not getting anywhere. But don't stay as late as you did last night, or else I'll go to the school board myself and complain about it."
"Why, Mrs. Young," Gene said, a broad smile on his face, "Now I know you're serious. Didn't you tell me you once tried to run over one of the school board members, Mrs. Thimble, with your VW bug?"
"No," Mrs. Young sharply replied, "She just got in the way after the meeting, that's all. I had every intention of going down that alley by the cafeteria to get out of the parking-lot."
"And you just happened to forget that the alley is a dead-end, right?"
"Exactly."
When Mrs. Young did not reply any further, Gene knew that his ribbing of her was done for the night. He slightly shook his head, straightened his tie and tilted the chair back down once again. "Well, Mrs. Young, I'll be done here in just another twenty minutes or so, so don't you worry about it. But the sooner we stop discussing it, the sooner I'll get done."
He picked up the pen on his desk and glanced at the paperwork in front of him. He could still see Mrs. Young in front of him out of the corners of his eyes, and could see that she was ready to leave him alone for the night with an acknowledging nod of her head. She turned to walk out of the office, when she turned back to Gene.
"By the way, your ex-wife left a message for you earlier today that you never picked up," Mrs. Young said sweetly.
Gene groaned and slightly slumped in his chair. "Can't Diana leave me alone? The alimony check went out last week."
"Not her," Mrs. Young smiled, knowing he had caught him off-guard, "Your first wife called. Gena."
Gene groaned even louder. "Okay. Okay. Thanks for the message, Mrs. Young. I'll make sure to contact her when I get home tonight."
Mrs. Young curtsied slightly in approval at Gene's response, knowing that it would be the final wordplay for the night. She reached for the doorknob and closed it behind her as she left, trying desperately not to laugh out loud.
Gene could hear her footsteps clicking in the hallway as she went. He held the pen in his hand, ready to sign off on more paperwork, but his mind was elsewhere. After staring at the piece of paper in front of him for a full minute, he tossed the pen on the desk and rubbed his eyes.
"Why did she have to call," Gene mumbled to himself. "Like I don't have enough going on right now."
Although he said it, and felt that the phone call from his ex-wife was throwing him off of his work, he knew that was not all of it. There was something else that was nagging at him. Something that had been blocking his normal thought-process for the past few days, but he could not quite place what that something was.
It was a nagging feeling, however. At first he believed it was his job just making him depressed; but it extended beyond that to just feeling a bit hollow. It was as if something was missing in his life, although he had no idea what it was. After all, everything had been the same in his life for much, much too long.
Maybe that was it, he thought to himself. That he had run himself down into a rut and needed a break. Summer break was only a few weeks away, however, so if he could just hold on until then he could get away. Maybe get out the guitar and see if he still remembered any of the old songs. Maybe call up a few old friends and jam with them or something. Maybe visit some of the old places. New York was not that far away, after all.
Then again, a lot of the places he used to know were gone now, Gene thought as he sighed. Even when he went to visit his mother, which was always worth the drive, it was depressing to see the old neighborhood change so much. Every trip turned up one more landmark of his youth disappearing to be replaced by a McDonalds or parking lot or something else. Even the stores that he used to always check out when he had a chance were gone now, with the exception of one small record shop in the Village and a comic book store that he knew of in New Jersey. Most of the people were gone as well -- to other parts of the country or gone in a more permanent sense of the word.
Besides, it was not like he would really have the time anyway. Tying up a few loose ends so he would not have to worry about things would take at least a couple of weeks after school let out for the summer. Then there was a teacher's convention in the middle of July that the school board had asked him to attend. Having skipped out on it the previous year and gotten reprimanded for doing so, he knew there was no way to avoid it again. He would have to be prepared and that would take up time before the convention. Not to mention that he would need to be back at school by the first week of August to get ready for the next school year.
No. There was no time to take a week or two off and just take it easy. To really get his thoughts in order. To really get his life in order. Things were moving along as they should whether he liked it or not and that was just the facts of life, Gene reflected. He dropped his hands into his lap and sighed again before reaching back over the desk towards another stack of paperwork. He had just pulled the stack over to the front of the desk when he heard a pounding at the door.
The noise came so unexpectedly and was so loud that Gene jumped as he jerked his head up to look at the door to his office. He could only make out a dim, fuzzy shadow through the glass on the door, and for a moment he thought that Mrs. Young had returned to tease him further.
The figure on the other side of the door again knocked, only this time it was more of a repeated pounding on the door than a cursory knock. Something completely out of fashion for Mrs. Young, Gene knew, making him feel hesitant in responding to the knocking at the door.
Which immediately made him feel foolish. Most probably the janitor had decided to work late and was finally going to change the burnt-out lights in the office, Gene thought to himself. It was not like the janitor was going to come at him with a screwdriver or plunger or something. At least, Gene did not think so, although considering how his day had been going anything was possible, he chuckled to himself.
"Yes?" Gene said from his chair, not bothering to get up to open the door.
Upon hearing Gene's voice, the figure moved to turn the doorknob and the door flung open with a bit more force than Gene thought was necessary. The door hit the doorjamb on the wall and bounced slightly back with a wobble, coming to a stop inches away from the wall.
Gene tried to make out the figure in the doorway, but the sunlight streaming in from the hallway made him squint so tightly that he felt that his eyes were closed. Absentmindedly, Gene raised a hand up over his eyes as if he could cut down on the glare in front of him by doing so; then dropped the hand back down when he realized that it was a reflex that accomplished nothing.
"Yes?" Gene said again. "Can I help you?"
Gene waited for a response, but could make out only some heavy breathing coming from the figure in the doorway. Gene wet his lips.
"Look, can I --"
"Are you the Simmons?" The voice that came out was heavy and deep, as if it came from a region below the surface of the earth instead of the direction of the door.
Gene instantly thought of Mrs. Thimble from the school board, but pushed the thought out of his head as quickly as it had popped in. "Excuse me?"
"Are you the Simmons," the figure asked once again, remaining perfectly still in the doorway.
"Simmons?" Gene blinked a couple of times as he thought about the question. "Simmons? No, I'm not Simmons. I'm Principal Klein. Are you looking for one of the teachers here? Because we don't have anyone here by that name."
Time passed as Gene waited for a reaction. Instead there was silence as he tried to adjust his eyes to the glare.
"Look, could you come in, I can't really see --"
"Are you the Simmons?" The voice seemed even deeper than before and took on an almost overpowering echo, which made the hairs on the back of Gene's head raise.
"Like I told you," Gene said, frustration edging into his voice as he spoke. "I am Principal Klein and we don't have anyone here by the name of Simmons."
Gene thought he heard laughter coming from the figure in the doorway.
"You are the Simmons. You deny, but you are."
"Ooooo-kay, that's fine," Gene reached over his desk to the phone and picked up the receiver. "I'll tell you what, I'll have someone come over in a nice bright blue uniform and he'll decide if I'm Simmons or not. How's about that?"
Before Gene could begin dialing the phone, the figure leaped into the office and with one swift movement of a limb, knocked the phone off the desk and into the far wall. The movement was so fast that the telephone cord snapped and flew back into Gene's face as he held the receiver still in his left hand. Gene raised his right hand to feel his chin where the cord had hit him, but froze in his movement when he finally saw the figure for the first time in the light of his desklamp, which had been knocked over on to its side when the phone went flying.
It was not human, and although it stood on two limbs, those limbs were hardly like legs. Instead they appeared to be more like reddish tentacles, like those of an octopus but larger and more muscular. Also, unlike tentacles, they were sturdy and firmly placed on the ground, even though secretion erupted from the pores of the tentacles at varying times, leaving a small trail of deep purplish ooze on the floor behind the creature.
The creature's head was nowhere to be seen. Instead, what Gene had assumed had been the head when all he saw was a silhouette was merely the overgrowth of the creature's hairy spine. A spine that split off into a y-formation at the top of the creature's body and went down the arms for support, just as it did for the legs underneath the torso.
The torso of the creature was where the voice had come from, and it was thick with folded layers of red, pulsating membranes that lead to a slit above the center of the torso that displayed a curved row of eyes much like a spider. The slit flapped up and down as if the creature was blinking in the light coming from the desklamp.
Below the slit was another larger one that Gene at first believed to be another row of eyes. He realized his assumption was incorrect when the slit opened to reveal jagged teeth that lead to another row of teeth behind it.
And another row behind that.
And another behind that.
And as the slit became wider, for a moment Gene thought for sure that the creature was actually smiling at him.
Gene's eyes widened as the creature pulled one of the twisting upper limbs towards him and with an audible flick, a series of sharp steel-like quills extended from the end of the limb just centimeters away from Gene's face. Gene felt the hot, foul breath of the creature as it began to laugh.
The creature raised the limb back and high into the air and into the darkness away from the light. The creature's smile seemed to shine brightly as Gene looked up at the tentacle raised above him. Gene wondered what the pain would feel like when he heard a cry come from behind the creature.
The scream was high, loud, and to Gene's relief, purely human. The creature also heard the cry and began to turn when it felt someone leap on to its back and drape their limbs around the torso of the creature. The tentacle limbs of the creature frayed in an attempt to reach behind itself, but it could not get near the person latched to the creature's back.
Nor did such movements seem to upset the person holding on to the creature. As Gene watched silently, he saw the person's head pop up from behind the creature and for a moment it looked almost comical, as if the hideous monster that was about to kill him had suddenly decided instead to give the woman a piggyback ride.
A woman, that was for sure, Gene thought. Somewhere in her thirties with shoulder-length black hair that had obviously been pulled back at one point, but had now fallen into her face during the tussle. The face of the woman appeared serious, angry and striking at the same time, with a slight crook to the nose. Perhaps the most striking feature of all was the makeup that covered her eyes, which reached from the lower eyelid and outlined her eyes in an almost catlike way to the top of her eyebrows. Inside of the black outside appeared to be deep red mascara that leapt into four flame-like ridges above each of her eyebrows and covered her eyelids completely in red.
Gene could clearly see her face as she intertwined her stiletto-heeled boots and locked her legs into place just below the slit of eyes on the creature. Upon doing this, the woman leaned over the top of the creature and as if imitating the creature from just moments before, raised her right hand into a balled fist high above her head.
The inch-high steel claw rings that were on each finger of her right hand reflected in the light coming from the desklamp and rays of golden light briefly sparkled throughout the room before she plunged the fist down at the creature.
The creature howled in pain as the woman threw her right fist into the slit of eyes below her. Purplish fluid flew from the eye and splattered on to the desk in front of Gene as the creature turned around and again in order to reach the woman who clung to its back. As the limbs twisted in movement, the creature knocked the lamp off of Gene's desk, which hit the ground and shined upward towards the ceiling. A number of the folders and papers on the desk also went up into the air, showering the room like snow as the creature twirled in madness and the woman twisted her hand deeper into the socket that once held the row of eyes.
The howls that screeched forth from the creature were deafening as it moved around the room, while the woman held on to the creature as if trying to tame a wild horse. One of the creature's limbs reached out and slammed down hard into the center of an old, weathered velvet couch against one wall, immediately smashing the couch into two. The steel quills on the other limb flew across the cement wall and left seven deep, straight grooves in its wake.
The creature howled again, only less in anger and more in protest as the legs of the creature gave way and it toppled over on to the floor. Upon falling, the woman quickly released her legs and lightly stepped to one side of the creature, almost as if dismounting a horse. In doing so, her right hand wretched free of the creature's face with a sickening sucking sound and Gene could see the warm purple mucus on her hand in the light, although he wish he could not.
The creature tried to rise once, but could do little more than flick one of its arms a couple of times before a final moan came froth. Then there was silence in the room.
Gene felt beads of sweat reach his eyelids and he blinked several times as his eyes moved back and forth between the monstrous sight of the creature dead on the floor of his office and the nearly identical monstrous vision of the cool-eyed woman staying over her dead prey.
She appeared in front of Gene as if waiting for a picture to be taken of her catch of the day, with her weight on one hip and her left leg extended outward. She had a tall, slender body and was dressed in a deep blood-red, skin-tight, leather leotard that extended from her boots to her wrists, making her look like a satanic Emma Peel in Gene's view. Gene had seen that the outfit left her muscular back exposed in order to display an ornamental Chinese dragon tattoo there. She also wore a pattern of black and red lace around her hips like a belt, and the lace hung down to the top of her thighs. Her hands were covered in black gloves that went halfway up to her elbows, and there was -- of course, as Gene looked at her -- the claw-rings on her right hand as well.
Gene watched speechless as the woman looked with a mixture of triumph and disgust at the creature on the floor. She raised her left hand and pulled her hair back out of her face as she looked at the warm patch of the creature's blood that was on her still-clenched right hand. Excitement seemed to dance in her eyes as she raised her right hand up to her face, and Gene felt revulsion as he immediately thought of what she could do next. To Gene's relief, she spoke to him instead. "Planning on calling someone?" Gene could see the woman smile as she spoke, although her head was down.
Gene had no comprehension of what she had said at first. Once the words had sunk in, he still had trouble understanding what she meant.
"W-wh . . . what . . .?"
"Or were you going to dive in and save me with the phone?" The woman chuckled lightly to herself.
Gene's brows knotted up, still lost in attempting to decode the woman's words. Darting his eyes back and forth, he suddenly focused on the detached phone receiver that he still had in his left hand. His knuckles had turned white and he released the receiver from his grasp with some pain due to the release of tension. He rubbed his left hand slowly with his right, feeling as if the woman was mocking him for some reason.
"What is this? Who are you?" Gene asked in what he hoped to be his sternest tone, but as his voice cracked on the first two words, he knew he had not pulled it off.
The woman took little notice of Gene, as she dipped her left index finger into the blood on her right hand and began to make patterns on the glove.
"Are you the Simmons?" She asked, her voice tinged with a metallic tone. Even so, her voice seemed light and playful; like her statement was a private joke. Her eyes never left the view of her hands.
"What is this about Simmons? I don't have any idea who you are --"
"Are you Simmons," the woman flashed her eyes upward and looked at Gene with even more disgust than she did when looking at the creature moments before. Her voice had taken on a louder metallic ring and she spit the words out with distaste. "Are you Gene Simmons?"
The name finally connected in Gene's mind once it was spoken. He moved his mouth as if to speak, then stopped as a flood of memories from his early past came back to him. Still, he also knew what answering yes to the question might bring him, and he hesitated to respond.
"Gene Simmons?" Gene's voice was raspy. "No, I don't know who he is."
The woman frowned slightly as she tilted her head in order to inspect the man sitting at the desk in front of her.
Her concentration was diverted by the flash of light that appeared between them from the floor, although her gaze never quite left Gene. Gene looked to where the creature was, only to see that it had vanished and only stains on the floor remained to prove what had once been there.
When he looked back up at the woman, she had a half-smile on her face.
"You're lying," she said in a voice that had no sense of the metallic menace that had come before. For the first time, Gene noticed that the woman had an accent that he could not quite place, but possibly from London, certainly British.
Without turning away from Gene, the woman called out to someone. "I've found him," she shouted. "He's here in his office."
"I demand to know what's going on here?" Gene felt some of his energy return as his anger began to rise. "What was that thing? Why was it going to kill me? Who are you? What's going on?"
Brightness filled the room and Gene felt panic for a split-second before he realized that the lights were actually his office's ceiling lights being turned on. As he adjusted to the lighting he looked to the doorway to see a man with his hand on the light-switch.
"The janitor must have fixed the lights during lunch and didn't tell me," Gene said in a quiet apologetic tone. He knew that the reason for his panic had no bearing on the people in front of him, but saying it out loud made him feel better anyway.
The man at the light-switch was about six feet tall and wore a dark brown jumpsuit that opened like a vest at the chest with fur around the collar. He wore brown leather boots and gloves, and a leather belt with a buckle that displayed a small fox face. His hair was long, dark-brown, curly, and thick. Yet, it was his face, much like the woman's before him, which got Gene's attention. While the skin was mostly bare, his eyes were covered with black, red and brown makeup that gave the man the appearance of an animal.
" . . . Like a fox . . ." Gene whispered to himself.
If the man had heard Gene, he made no notice. The man released the lightswitch and pointed at the woman.
"First off," the man said in a smooth New York accent, "that's Susie."
He pointed at himself. "My name is Paul Caravello."
He then folded his arms. Crossing his right leg over his left, he leaned against the doorframe and gently smiled at Gene.
"And we're here because reality is all screwed up."
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Copyrighted (c) 2000-2001 Dale Sherman / KISS ASYLUM
Artwork by Larry Blake
We kindly ask that you please not reproduce this feature without prior consent!
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